Free Desktop Recorder Streaming Video Software

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CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on
your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and
using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean,
mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

Here are just a few ways you can use this software:

You can use it to create demonstration videos for any software
program

Or how about creating a set of videos answering your
most frequently asked questions?

You can create video tutorials for school or college class

You can use it to record a recurring problem with your
computer so you can show technical support people

You can use it to create video-based information products you
can sell

You can even use it to record new tricks and techniques you
discover on your favourite software program, before you forget
them

“Nick, here is what I think I'll do; rather than fork out
the $300.00 bucks for[CENSORED],
I'll just keep using CamStudio.

“I am a self-employed consultant that works in the public
safety community (cops, fire, ems, dispatch etc). What I
have planned is to use CamStudio to capture on screen
video for training vids.

“Thanks for a great product and your help!”

Joe Borgione
www.AlpineGeographic.com

Don't like the sound of your voice? No problem.

CamStudio can also add high-quality, anti-aliased (no jagged
edges) screen captions to your recordings in seconds and with the
unique Video Annotation feature you can even personalise your
videos by including a webcam movie of yourself
"picture-in-picture" over your desktop.

And if all that wasn't enough, CamStudio also comes with its own
Lossless Codec that produces crystal clear results with a much
smaller filesize compared with other more popular codecs, like
Microsoft Video 1.

You have total control over the output of your video: you can
choose to use custom cursors, to record the whole screen or just a
section of it and can reduce or increase the quality of the
recording depending on if you want smaller videos (for emailing to
people, for instance) or you can have "best quality" ones for
burning onto CD/DVD.

But all of these features would be worthless if CamStudio wasn't
easy to use ... fortunately that's not the case. CamStudio can be
learned in a matter of minutes and comes with a comprehensive
built-in helpfile, so if you do manage to get
stuck, you can simply hit "Help" and get the answers you need.

So where can I get it and how much does it cost?

You can download and use it completely free - yep - completely
100% free for your personal and commercial projects as CamStudio
and the Codec are released under the GPL (for more details on this
license, click here.)

There are no royalties or any monies to pay - although if you do
use it for a commercial product, I wouldn't say no to a copy of
whatever you produce

CamStudio was originally released by a company called RenderSoft
who were subsequently bought by a company called eHelp who used
some of the technology in their program, RoboDemo ...

Some time later, eHelp was bought by Macromedia who wanted
RoboDemo (which was to become Captivate) ...

Knowing that CamStudio did some of the stuff RoboDemo did for
free (mainly export to streaming Flash), they released a newer
version which fixed some bugs but most importantly, removed
certain features. Gone was the ability to create SWFs, added was
the requirement to register to use it, and over time, links to the
various webpages that had CamStudio and its source code, became
broken.

However, I managed to find an earlier version complete with the
related CamStudio video codec and the source code for both then put the website up so
people could download them.

Issues

A number of people have mentioned having trouble viewing SWF
videos generated by CamStudio. It turns out there's a bug which
means you can't see anything if you try watching them with
Netscape or Firefox (Internet Explorer works fine) ...

The next update (2.5) will fix this but until then, here's a
temporary workaround:

Open the related HTML to the SWF you've
just generated and look for the line starting with the "EMBED
SRC" command ...

Change the Width and Height values in this
line to match values in the line starting with "OBJECT
CLASSID".

Save the file and you should be good to go
...

I seem to be getting a lot of questions about a registration code
... the version of CamStudio available from this site doesn't
require registration AND has more features, so uninstall v2.1 from
your system, download and install CamStudio from here and you're
good to go!

If your computer's memory or virtual memory usage starts climbing
rapidly when viewing a SWF authored by CamStudio to the point when
your PC locks up so you have to reboot it, recreate the SWF from
your source AVI file and in SWF Producer, make sure you select the
Advanced tab and check the Memory Management tickbox (Manage Flash
player internal memory). That should sort the problem out. Thanks
to Ben Ward for the fix.

CamStudio
Updates

If you'd like to be notified when I have some news related to
CamStudio,signup to the
forum (link opens a new window) you'll be "in the loop"
...

Spread The Word ...

I'd love to get CamStudio into the Top 10 Most Popular downloads
at SourceForge ... for no other reason than ... um ... I'd like
to, so tell as many people as possible ...

If you'd like to link back to this site, here's some example code
you can use:

I've got big plans for CamStudio and want to continously improve
it and the Codec as well ... but I'm not a programmer.

The potential for CamStudio to be used as a professional training
and support tool is huge and not just in the information
technology and internet marketing arenas, but also in diverse
markets and tasks like home eduation, recording online
geneological research, keeping a video record of special offer
prices on your favourite snowboarding (or whatever) website - you
get the idea ...

It doesn't matter if you're at home in Las Vegas or on an Alaskan
Cruise - if you've got a laptop or PC you can use CamStudio.

So if there are any Visual C++ programmers out there that have
Flash, video encoding and codec experience who'd like a challenge,
please get in touch.

So, at some point in the near future I'd like to start accepting
donations so any coders that work on this project will get some
kind of financial reward in addition to the warm, fuzzy feeling
they get from helping to resurrect this cracking piece of software
... so if you're feeling generous, please get in touch at the
email address above and let me know.

I'd also love to get your feedback on CamStudio ... what you
liked, what you thought sucked and what you think is missing.

DISCLAIMER: CamStudio is (c) Rendersoft Development.

The version available from this website is developed independently under the terms of the GNU Public License V2. This website, the software (in whole or in part) and any other related content is not affiliated with, connected to, sponsored by, endorsed by or derived from Camtasia or Camtasia Studio from Techsmith.com nor any other product or software with a similar sounding name from any other company.

Camtasia, Camtasia Studio and Techsmith are marks of Techsmith Corporation, registered in the U.S. and other countries.